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By The Huffington Post News Editors
No More Political Contributions
The buzz so far this week is the announcement that GS will make no political contributions - as a corporations - which our beloved Supreme Court of the United States ruled they and any other corporation could. Government courtesy of The Too Big To Fail.
In addition, GS announced that any employee wanting to contribute to a political campaign would have to pass it by "corporate" and get approval to do so.
I am not in agreement with the Supreme Court ruling and I firmly believe that all campaign spending should be limited and I am certainly happy to hear the PR that GS will not use its money to pay for BS ads for their favorite candidate. But once again, I don't see how theyl can constitutionally tell an employee to come get approval for their political donations. Is that not a violation of the First Amendment which is what the Supreme Court said they were protecting when they ruled? Again, I don't believe that the ruling protected the rights of a corporation as I don't believe that corporations fall into the category of We, The People. And as much as I dislike GS for their actions, statements and the way they have and still do conduct their business, I do not believe they are doing God's work by restricting the Free Speech of their employees. In fact, they are again openly violating our system and our principals. If I were one of their employees I would have to consider leaving them for this violation. Now wouldn't that be a hoot? I can see the headlines now:- "Mass Exodus of Goldman Sachs Employees Due to Constitutional Rights Violations". Of course, this would never happen but it is fun to think about.
But most important in all of this is by announcing that employees would have to go to management and disclose how much and to who they are contributing, violating their privacy as well as their First Amendment rights, is just plain WRONG and anti American.
Is Larry standing up for Goldman employees, you might be asking? No, I am not. I don't know most of them - any of them - in fact. What I am standing up for is our rights and freedoms as U.S. Citizens. What I am - and have been - standing up for is the justice for all, that we, in this country, are supposed to enjoy. I am standing up for "right is right" and wrong is wrong" regardless of who or what we are talking about. I am saying that GS seems to believe they are above even our Constitution and our laws - as they have exhibited over the past years and they need to be stopped.
To hear that Goldman Sachs will not use their bottomless pit of money to influence elections is at first glance very gratifying. To think they have no influence in government, the future of our government or those serving within our government is naive. They don't need to buy elections - they control the politicians by positions they hold within our government itself. In addition, they can simply divert their war chest of political funds to lobbyists. As the old saying goes, "money can buy you anything".
Let's put this announcement along side their announcement of no swearing in emails. Just more PR propaganda.
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